The hustle and bustle of everyday life, heaps of responsibilities and lack of money are just some of the reasons why some parents see food as “fast” more than anything else. But they don’t seem to realize they are setting a bad example for their children - an experiment by Chef Jamie Oliver showed that though children know well what an iPhone or a tablet is, they do not know what raw cauliflower or aubergine looks like.

To make sure this does not happen here, in Bulgaria, gastronomy schools have been mushrooming in the country. One of them is taking place in Sofia this week. The idea behind it is to impart information about good, pure and fresh food, to instill in children a sense of what good food is and how to share it with family and friends. With the help of the chefs from the HRC culinary academy, children are able to discover the joys of cookery and to acquire skills that will be helpful to them throughout their lives.

Delyana Moneva, director of the HRC culinary academy says that a person who cooks is a person who is free and happy, that instilling a love of cooking at an early age will bring joy into children’s lives:

“The purpose of any school is to develop social, professional and life skills and we at the HRC believe that gastronomic culture and abilities are really important in our lives and, in future, in the lives of our children. We all want our children to be healthy, happy and successful. And food culture has much to do with that; better still if we manage to light the spark of professional cooking.”

The culinary children’s academy is a fun way to gain serious knowledge and keep up the kids’ interest. The children taking part in the August academy are aged six to twelve. Most of them have a certain amount of knowledge from school and that is very helpful to the chefs tutoring them, though it is not obligatory.

Every day at the academy has a given theme, connected with pure and healthy food, good eating habits and the ability to set a table, to prepare and serve food and the beverages that go with it. Delyana Moneva says that the children cook in professional kitchens with all utensils suited to their age. The food they prepare there, they eat afterwards.

“The idea is to teach them to cook so as to have something tasty and healthy to eat at home. At the HRC we have experience in organizing cookery formats for children aged four to fourteen; so far we have done this in half-day weekend schools. Some of us in the HRC team have children of pre-school and school age so we are very aware of the need to have adequate holiday-time pursuits. So, we decided to have the academy in August. We have a group of 20 children, so we are full up, but in October we shall be able to have two groups of 20 children at the same time at our new facility.”

Children come to the academy to learn but they are also very imaginative:

“When children are not burdened by any experience in life they think anything is possible and that is a wonderful thing. In the kitchen anything really is possible, as long as it is safe and tasty. For example, we have combinations like meatballs with cherry sauce or biscuits covered in different coloured sweets to make glazing, pizza with chips instead of mozzarella… We have had so many bizarre combinations that we could even patent them!”

English version: Milena Daynova